The Play Company receives $135,000 Mellon Foundation Grant

The Play Company - the Off-Broadway theatre company celebrating its 10th anniversary currently with the U.S. premiere of Toshiki Okada's play ENJOY, which concludes its critically-acclaimed engagement on May 1, 2010 at 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan -- is delighted to announce it has been awarded a three-year, $135,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation designated to support an artistic director's discretionary fund and cash reserves. The grant is intended to help The Play Company maintain artistic initiatives and significantly develop the company's working capital fund.

"I am honored that The Mellon Foundation has selected The Play Company, along with a highly respected group of colleague theatres here in New York, to be recognized and supported at this time," says Founding Producer Kate Loewald. "This generous grant helps us enormously, and encourages us to continue to be bold, adventurous and forward-thinking in our artistic work. It also enables us realize our goal of building a meaningful cash reserve fund, that will help Play Co. maintain financial stability in this turbulent economic environment. We can continue to take risks on plays and artists we believe in, further our goal of providing artists with resources to generate original work, and explore new ways to connect local audiences with a whole world of new plays."

The Play Company is dedicated to producing adventurous new writing by playwrights from the U.S. and around the world. The company's production of Mr. Okada's play, about young Japanese men and women who work in a Tokyo manga café, is a critical and popular success at 59E59 Theaters in New York, where it runs through May 1.

Toshiki Okada is the director of his own theatre company in Japan, and is recognized as one of that country's leading contemporary playwrights. In what is regarded as a coup in many theatre circles, The Play Company production of ENJOY marks the first time that an Okada play has been performed by a company of actors not his own, and with a director other than Okada himself. ENJOY is the inaugural project in The Play Company's Universal Voices Translation Program, which commissions American translations of foreign-language plays. Aya Ogawa wrote the English translation and Dan Rothenberg directed the production.

Other recent Play Company productions include the NY premiere of Lloyd Suh's AMERICAN HWANGAP (U.S.), the U.S. premieres of Przemyslaw Wojcieszek's MADE IN POLAND (Poland); Robert Farquhar's BAD JAZZ (England), Vijay Tendulkar's SAKHARAM BINDER (India); Yoji Sakate's THE ATTIC (Japan); and The Presnyakov Brothers' TERRORISM (Russia); as well as world premieres of the American plays SMASHING by Brooke Berman and HIGH DIVE by Leslie Ayvazian. Play Co. received a 2007 OBIE Award for its "unique contribution to the theatre community."

Kate Loewald is Founding Producer of The Play Company; Lauren Weigel is Managing Producer.

For more information, visit www.playco.org

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